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Felix Wong of Colorado

Tour de France Bicycles & Historical Bike Weights

November 24, 2010

After swapping my Cannondale 3.0‘s hodgepodge of Campagnolo components for Shimano Dura-Ace 7700s, the bike weighs in at 19.0 pounds. In this day and age of ultra-light (and über-expensive) vélos bedecked with enough carbon fiber to embarrass a B2 Stealth Bomber, this seems a bit portly and admittedly, she could easily lose another 1.5 lbs. if I cared to spend a few hundred dollars for a lighter wheelset, saddle and handlebar.

But can you believe that my C’dale (with its 19-year-old aluminum frame) actually weighs less than the bicycles that Miguel Indurain, Jan Ullrich and Bjarne Riis rode to Tour de France victory in the mid- to late 90s? And every winning Tour bike before that!

Below are some of the bikes ridden to glory in the modern Tour de France era. Bike weights hovered between 18 and 22 pounds from 1968 to 1998, after which they plummeted especially with Lance Armstrong demanding every technological advantage. In 2004, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) imposed a minimum weight requirement of 15.0 pounds (6.8 kilograms) for bicycles raced in international events under their jurisdiction—including the Tour de France—so the lightest bike ever ridden to overall Tour victory was Armstrong’s Trek 5900 SL, weighing 14.5 pounds in 2003. (That win was later nullified.)

Some other observations are below. [August 11, 2013: Items below that are struck out are due to disqualifications of once-declared victors like Lance Armstrong implicated in doping scandals.]

In the last 40 years, a handful of bicycle manufacturers have dominated the race for the yellow jersey: Pinarello (13 as of July 2017), Gitane (with 9 or 12 victories), Peugeot (10), and Trek (9). Read this post for a detailed analysis and controversies regarding which bike company has won the most.

TVT (of France) claims to have at least 5 victories spanning from 1986-1991. Their bikes were frequently rebadged as other marques.

1994 was the last time the Tour was won a steel bike—a TIG-welded Pinarello-badged beauty ridden by Miguel Indurain.

Aluminum bicycles were ridden to glory by Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

In 1999, Lance Armstrong’s time-trial bike was a Trek-badged titanium Litespeed Blade. I think this is the only titanium bicycle that was ever used by a Tour de France winner (later nullified).

Ever since Lance Armstrong lead the Tour on a stock Trek OCLV in 1999, every winning bike has been made out of carbon fiber.

Shimano also finally had a win in the Tour starting in 1999 2007.

For the climbing stages in all seven of Lance Armstrong’s TdF overall first-place finishes, he used a downtube front shift lever to save weight (about 2-3 ounces). Nowadays, combination brake/shift levers (such as SRAM Red) are just as light as a separate downtube and brake lever—and bicycle manufacturers don’t even put braze-ons for downtube levers on their frames anymore—so 2005 will likely go down in history as the last year that downtube levers were used by a Tour de France winner.

Alberto Contador’s Trek Madone 5.2 in 2007 was the first Tour-winning bike with a mountain bike-like sloping top tube. Now almost all modern race bikes have “compact” frames, with the main holdouts being Cannondale and Pinarello.

SRAM had its first victory in 2010 despite Andy Schleck’s infamous chain-skipping incident. (He was later awarded TdF victory after Alberto Contador tested positive for clenbuterol.)

Cadel Evan was the first TdF winner using electronic shifting (Shimano Di2 on a BMC Teammachine SLR01) in 2011.

With the UCI limit of 6.8 kilos being so easy to achieve nowadays for sponsor-backed professionals, what will be the latest innovations we will see in the next decade of Tour de Frances? More widespread adoption of electronic shifting and aerodynamic tubing are a near certainty. Eventually, Shimano and SRAM will come out with 11-speed shifting to catch up with Campagnolo. [August 11, 2013: Done.]

I’ll go ahead and predict that by 2020 some sort of disc brake system for road bikes will be introduced and that electronic equipment (e.g., sensors, meters and communication devices) will be more integrated into the frames. [August 11, 2013: I made these predictions in 2010 and by now they already seem fait accompli.] Any one else with predictions?

Alsays:

How things have come on since the early 00’s.

Our first thoughts are probably related to frames but wheels, groupos and other detail parts must have come on strides; plenty of steel framed bikes out there now that are close to or even below the UCI limit…

Jamison Mahtosays:

Love this info. I am working on a novel in which the 1974 Tour figures prominently. I notice that the year’s 74 and 75 are missing from your chart. Why? And can you tell me what Merckx rode to the winner’s podium in those years and also suggest what were the major bikes riders were on during those years? The details are important to me in the telling of my story. I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you and keep up the great work. That’s a beautiful Gitane up there.